Coolahan made the allegation in an interview this afternoon with redbankgreen, which had been alerted to a Monmouth County Sheriff’s sale listing of Coolahan’s residence by a reader. The reader said she happened upon Coolahan’s name while perusing the list for real estate bargains.

The county lists the sale of Coolahan’s William Street home as having been scheduled for Sept. 24 as a result of a $445,000 judgment.

In a telephone interview, Coolahan acknowledged the pendency of bankruptcy and county-court actions, though he said the sheriff’s sale has been postponed to a future date. He said that he is well on his way to getting his finances in order after a long string of medical problems, and added that he is hopeful of saving his home from a mortgage company that is his primary creditor.

He also said he had consulted with Menna, who is an attorney, about his financial situation, and accused Menna of having leaked the information to parties Coolahan didn’t identify.

“I guarantee you got it from somebody who got it from Pat Menna,” Coolahan said. “I haven’t heard it from anybody else. Who the hell peruses the foreclosures, other than real estate people?”

Reached at his Shrewsbury office for comment, Menna, a Democrat, called the accusation an “absolute fucking fallacy. It’s a lie.”

A Pennsylvania couple who owned a purported Red Bank investment firm that offered specialized financial services for podiatrists have been indicted on state charges of bilking their clients out of more than $500,000, the Star-Ledger is reporting.

From the article:

Jeffrey Lafferty, 39, and Vincella Ross, 38, were charged in a five-count indictment handed up in Trenton yesterday by a state grand jury, Attorney General Anne Milgram said. They are charged with conspiracy, money laundering, securities fraud and other counts.

The couple ran Lafferty & Partners LLC, which specialized in providing wealth management for podiatrists and was affiliated with a member organization for podiatrists, authorities said. Lafferty and Ross allegedly spent the money investors gave them on a home in Green Lane, Pa., and for expenses including airline tickets, hotel rooms and mortgage payments, authorities said.

The West Long Branch firm announced last night that it was done in by the sharp slowdown in the residential market and will lay off 350 of it’s 380 employees, the Press reports.

A bankruptcy filing remains a possibility, a company official told the newspaper.

From the story:

“The plain fact is that we have been battling against a real estate market that recently has turned into a sharp decline, and the company no longer has the liquidity to operate as a going concern,” said John D. Blomquist, Foxtons’ senior vice president and general counsel.

Mayor Mike Halfacre and the Fair Haven borough council got tough Monday night with its engineering firm for presenting a contract change order that would cost the borough an additional $67,000 for work on its $480,000 River Road streetscape plan.

“We’ve got issues,” Halfacre told principal engineer David M. Marks of T&M Associates in Middletown, which is responsible for the sidewalks, lighting, and new curbing on River Road in the downtown business district. “This is well over what the project should cost.”

The disputed charges include additional landscape ties, pipe for electrical wiring that was originally to come from Jersey Central Power & Light, and other items the borough is being billed for that the mayor insists were “not specified in the contract.”

Councilman Jonathan Peters insisted that T&M “deliver on what was promised. These problems come from T&M.”

It’s not often that firebrand Republican Councilman John Curley makes much headway against the tide of the Democratic majority.

But for a fleeting moment last night, Curley seemed to have raised concerns that just might bring the Dems around to his point of view.

In the end, though, uh-uh.

The issue was a series of invoices, known as change orders, that would increase the cost of the ongoing $1.6 million renovation of the Red Bank Public Library by $8,350.

Curley raised questions about the particulars, and  to his evident surprise  found his concerns echoed and expanded on by Democrat Art Murphy III and even his main adversary in the post-McKenna era, Michael DuPont.

RiverCenter announced the hire in a press release issued this afternoon.

redbankgreen hasn’t yet heard back from Adams after leaving her a telephone message. But going by her resume, she appears to have extensive experience with special improvement districts, the legislatively authorized taxing authorities charged with revitalizing business districts.

The 12th-District Senate race between incumbent Democrat Ellen Karcher and Republican Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck, already framed by both sides as a contest over which candidate is the most committed to ethics reforms in Trenton, got personal yesterday.

Karcher accused Beck, of Red Bank, of violating ethics rules by using state letterhead and other trappings of office for political purposes within 90 days of an election.

The complaint concerns a letter written on Beck’s legislative stationery to residents of Seabrook Village in Tinton Falls. It highlights Beck’s opposition to a plan by the Navy to allow some 300 civilian families to occupy military housing at the Naval Weapons Station Earle, and refers readers to “our online petition” expressing opposition to the plan.

The website location of the petition  nociviliansatearle.org  is prominently marked as “Sponsored by Beck for Senate and O’Scanlon and Casagrande for Assembly,” referring to Beck ticketmates Declan O’Scanlon of Little Silver and Caroline Casagrande of Colts Neck.

In letters sent yesterday to the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Ethical Standards and the state Election Law Enforcement Commission, Karcher asks for investigations into whether state legislative funds were improperly used for campaign purposes. She contends the letter was sent out in August, within the 90-day moratorium.

Beck responded that the complaint was “frivolous,” and that she never mailed the letter. Instead, she handed it out during a visit to Seabrook Village, a senior living center in Tinton Falls. Beck said that handing out the letter did not violate the “spirit or letter of the law.”

There’s lots of empty space as Michael Bonney transitions his Monmouth Street shop from a newsstand to a convenience store.

By LINDA G. RASTELLI

When Michael Bonney bought Red Bank News in May, it seemed the decades-old monument to print journalism, deemed “a Red Bank treasure” by one regular, would continue much the same as before.

Patrons could still lose themselves browsing the racks of newspapers and magazines that took up most of the shops floor space.

But today, what was once a crowded warren of newsprint and glossies is open space that mainly draws the eye to the checkered black and white floor (soon to be replaced by hardwood or linoleum, Bonney said).

The magazine racks are gone, as Bonney has drastically pruned his 500-title magazine inventory, which he’s planning to replace with more household items, including dairy products and toiletries.

“It’ll be more like Prown’s,” he explained, referring to the much lamented Broad Street five-and-dime that closed in 2003 and for many residents remains the symbol of a slower, more stable, less gentrified downtown.

Now it seems that the Red Bank News known to generations of customers is also about to begin slowly fading into the collective memory, as newspaper and magazine sales become more of a sideline to its business than its mainstay.

Turns out that investing a ton of money to transform the former Red Bank municipal building and police station into a learning center full of digital technology for kids 11 and under hasn’t paid off as well as the folks at the Community YMCA expected.

Even with art and dance classes for Red Bank Catholic students, the grand old red-brick building with the awesome arched portico is “pretty quiet” most of the day, someone who works there tells redbankgreen.

And after school â?? well, ditto. With Mom and Dad both at work, who’s going to transport little Johnny or Jasmine to the downtown center in the middle of the afternoon and then pick him or her up a couple of hours later?

“For working families, it’s just tough to get them here,” says Gary Laermer, president and chief executive of the Y, parent of the cultural center.

One result? “Participation hasn’t been as good as we would have liked,” says Sean Byrnes, a member of the Y’s board of directors and its former chairman.

Another? Well, even though the nonprofit Y got the Monmouth Street building from the borough for just $1 in 2002, it’s got a $1 million mortgage on it, according to Monmouth County records. That’s got be met.

So it’s time for Plan B, which calls for bringing in some culture-hungry geezers, relatively speaking.

Dale Connor, the tax court clerk in Fair Haven, is getting a new office.

Not a bigger one. A second one, right next to the workspace she already uses. And she’ll be required by the state’s highest court to split her time between the two.

According to today’s Asbury Park Press, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that Connor can continue to serve as both the borough’s tax collector and its municipal court clerk  as long as she does the jobs in different workspaces.

She’s been working part-time in both jobs since at least 1980, according to an earlier report. And as far back as 1994, the court had given her he thumbs-up to continue doing so, even though she was the last of a breed in Monmouth County: a court clerk who also had administrative duties in local government.

The International Game Fish Association, which has jurisdiction over such things, disallowed the 24.3-pound fluke as a record catch “not because [Oswald] lied as the critics claimed  she passed a lie-detector test about whether she caught it  or allowed the fish to be eaten by a wild animal,” the Ledger reports.

Instead, it was because the 45-year-old Neptune resident broke a rule.

While reeling in the hulking specimen of the coveted saltwater fish, Oswald temporarily rested her pole on the rail of her boat. She volunteered that information to the IGFA  sort of the Olympic committee of the recreational fishing world  and was disqualified.

For 20 years now, Sea Bright’s temporary lockup has failed state Department of Corrections inspections because of an enduring deficiency, today’s Asbury Park Press reports.

The jail doesn’t have a secure facility for moving prisoners in and out of the building, known as a ‘vehicle sally port,’ the paper reports. And the problem won’t go away until a new jail is built or the existing one gets a makeover, it seems everyone involved agrees.

Christela Diaz, the Aberdeen woman who gave birth to a boy in her car near exit 109 of the Parkway Tuesday, tells the Asbury Park Press that she and her husband were shocked by little Zachary’s sudden arrival.

For one thing, the baby wasn’t due until Oct. 16. And the couple “had just left a doctor’s office in Holmdel on Tuesday after a routine checkup with Diaz’s doctor when the 26-year-old woman began experiencing contractions,” the Press reports.

Diaz and her husband, Anthony Nina, were heading south on the Parkway when Diaz “suddenly began clutching his hand and yelling that she could feel the baby coming.”

More:

Nina said he tried to hurry to Riverview Medical Center. But by the time he got off the Parkway at Exit 109, his wife had already given birth in their Nissan Murano sport-utility vehicle and was holding a 6 pound, 2 ounce baby boy against her chest, wrapped up in her blouse.

Jenn Woods didn’t know the name of the building that features the window array shown in last week’s ‘Where.’ But she knew it was across East Front Street from the Welsh Farms store, and she beat another regular, Bob Colmorgen, to the “send” button.

Bob knew both its present name  Riverview Terrace  and its former one  the Teller Building. Back in the days when he was on police patrol, Bob tells us, he used to check the Teller Building doors at night. But the big window with the splendid view of the Navesink wasn’t there then.

after he bought a four-pack of StarKist tuna cans and discovered that the nutritional information on the outside plastic wrapping differed from the nutritional information he discovered on the can labels inside, according to Andrew R. Wolf, De Benedetto’s lawyer.

Wolf said DeBenedetto filed the suit because he’s interested in nutrition and was concerned about the labels, which had inconsistent figures for calories, fat, protein and cholesterol.

The nutrition label on the outside packaging gave lower amounts for all four categories than the inside labels.

A pregnant woman enroute to Riverview Medical Center from exit 109 of the Parkway gave birth to a son in her car yesterday afternoon.

The Star-Ledger says the woman’s husband, who was driving, called the Monmouth County 911 Communications Center to say his wife was in labor. Christine McCarthy, an experienced EMT on just her second day of work as a sheriff’s 911 dispatcher, advised the man to pull over, which he did, on Newman Springs Road.

But baby Zachary apparently couldn’t wait to make his debut.

From the story:

“Before she could even give (the father) any information and help him out, the baby was out,” Monmouth County Undersheriff Cynthia Scott said, describing the exchange. “(McCarthy) said she was excited
 (it’s) a lot different than helping deliver a baby when it’s right there in front of you.”